In Memory of George Floyd

Abstract

The death of George Floyd shocked the world in the summer of 2020. The video recording of a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee against Mr. Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, while other officers watched and did nothing, stands as incontrovertible evidence that racialized people (especially Blacks) are often victimized by the implicit biases and overt actions of White police officers. More recently, the officers involved were convicted for their action that led to George Floyd’s death. While shocking, the incident was hardly surprising to racialized people or those of us committed to social justice. This was one of many instances in a wider pattern of violence and discrimination directed at Blacks by police officers; Floyd’s name joins a list of names including Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and Duante Wright. This was just one of many events during the era of President Trump (2016–2020) that represented a sharp turn away from the apparent progress signalled by the election of his predecessor Barack Obama (2008–2016). The shift from racial progress to racial regression over two presidencies is representative of similar cycles in the history of the United States and the world. ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ proclaimed President Barrack Obama in a eulogy for one of the victims of a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (Kakutani, 2015). These words, first expressed in a sermon by Theodore Parker in the 1850ʹs and made famous by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960ʹs, were intended to offer hope in difficult times. Kendi (2021), however, expressed concern that this ‘popular construct of racial progress’ is problematic today. He argued that its application today ‘does more than conceal and obfuscate: it actually undermines the effort to achieve and maintain equality’ (p. 425). The singular racial history of the United States, according to Kendi (2021), is characterized by duality between ‘historical steps toward equity and justice and historical steps toward inequity and injustice’ (p. 425). Elsewhere, Kendi, 2019) wrote that the ongoing historical tension between antiracist progress and racist progress can only be broken by moving beyond the duel between segregationist and assimilationist mindsets through antiracism. Antiracism entails recognition that ‘racist policies are the cause of racial inequities’ (p. 20) and that individual acts of racism, such as the killing of George Floyd, are not outliers but ‘an immediate and visible manifestation of an underlying racial policy’ (p. 20). Such policies and practices also permeate education, where racialized students continue to face discrimination ad diminished opportunities for advancement. This ‘In Memory of George Floyd’ special issue of Studying Teacher Education is a response to the structural racism that informs society and its institutions. How can teacher educators address their own inherent biases and unconscious perpetuation of racist policies? How can they address diversity, equity and inclusion in their classes? How can they break free to become antiracists? STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 2022, VOL. 18, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2022.2058317